Zimbabwe police attack protesting doctors

NY Times:

imbabwean riot police officers brandishing batons charged into a group of 100 doctors and nurses on Wednesday in Harare, the capital, breaking up a demonstration for better pay and working conditions in a nation suffering from both an epidemic of cholera and an economy in free fall.

The health workers, many dressed in uniform, fled as the police approached. Nearby, teachers and other union members tried to join the protest but were clubbed by yet more police officers, and at least 15 were arrested.

Earlier in the day, armed men identifying themselves as the police officers took a human rights activist, Jestina Mukoko, from her home in what Amnesty International called “part of an established pattern of harassment and intimidation of human rights defenders.” Ms. Mukoko, whose whereabouts are unknown, is director of the Zimbabwe Peace Project, an organization that has been documenting rights abuses.

The cholera epidemic and the new crackdown on dissent come in a country already mired in desperation. The government is paralyzed by a stalemated power-sharing deal, and the official inflation rate is 231 million percent. Grocery shelves are largely barren. Most public hospitals and schools are closed.

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To add to the chaos, soldiers, angered at the meagerness of their deflated pay, on Monday rampaged through central Harare, breaking windows, looting stores and robbing the money changers who deal in foreign currency. Armed police officers had to disperse the marauding troops with tear gas.

The demonstrations on Wednesday brought yet another macabre scene of violence. The police “assaulted several women, some of them pregnant,” said Lovemore Matombo, president of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions.

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Mugabe's madness is becoming harder to sustain. With the army protesting their worthless pay, Mugabe appears to have only the police under his control. How much longer can he continue to satisfy them with worthless currency?